**Issue Update** Obama Appoints 15, Including Becker, During Recess

Despite strong opposition, President Obama proceeded yesterday with 15 recess appointments, including the highly controversial and twice defeated appointment of labor activist, Craig Becker, to the National Labor Relations Board. In addition to Becker, the President also appointed Mark Pearce, a labor-side attorney, but did not appoint a lone Republican nominee, Brian Hayes, or any other candidates to join the NLRB. Prospects for increasing labor-friendly regulatory changes to labor relations law now grows dramatically, though it is important to note that without Senate confirmation, recess appoints will expire in Jan. 2011.

March 28 Post: Will the President Really Appoint Craig Becker During the Recess?

The US Chamber's two most recent posts addresses the question outlining the importance of appointing a labor activist like Becker to one of the Administration's biggest financial and political supporters: organized labor. This post outlines how a recess appoint of Becker would contradict previous statements made by then-Senator Obama, while this one goes into great detail showing exactly how important the Becker nomination and EFCA is to big labor.

It is important to note that it's been a major labor disappointment to have not yet passed EFCA, and labor took another big hit when the healthcare reconciliation package passed this week because it stripped the "construction carve-out" from the original Senate bill which would have made construction businesses with as few as five employees subject to the healthcare bill's employer mandates thereby providing a huge advantage to unions.